


Steady Hands, Unsteady Heart

by MusicalLuna



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cake decorating, Fluff, Frosting, Insecure Tony, M/M, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha/Ambiguous, Supportive Ball Buster Steve, Swearing, mostly this is just tony anxiously decorating a cake while steve supports him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9257765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/pseuds/MusicalLuna
Summary: Natasha's getting married, and for some godforsaken reason, Tony's in charge of decorating the cake.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [windscryer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/windscryer/gifts).



“How the hell did I get roped into this?” Tony demands, brandishing a pastry bag filled with pink and orange frosting. A little bit squirts out in his vehemence and dribbles down the front of Steve’s shirt.

“Aw, Tony, that’ll stain!”

“You have like, eight hundred of those t-shirts, and they cost five bucks for a three-pack at Wal-Mart. It’s not the end of the world, Steve. Messing this up, _that’s_ the end of the world. Natasha will de-man me if I ruin her wedding cake. Is this supposed to be some kind of gauntlet test? How the hell did I wind up being the go-to _cake_ guy?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re good with your hands, Tony, we all figured it would carry over—”

“I’m so outraged, I’m going to let that perfect opportunity slide. What part of _it’s her goddamn wedding cake_ are you misunderstanding? I’ve never decorated a cake in my life!”

“But you watched the video.”

“Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to come out looking like that. What if the flowers are too big? What if they’re too small? JESUS CHRIST, WHAT IF I PUT MY HAND THROUGH THE CAKE?”

Steve sighs and hooks his hand around Tony’s neck, tugging him over to where he can lay a kiss on his cheek. “You’re not going to put your hand through the cake, Tony.”

“I could! I could do it right now!” he says, waving said appendage threateningly in the general direction of the as-yet naked cake.

“But you _won’t_ ,” Steve says, lips twitching, “because Natasha would castrate you.”

Tony huffs. “I’m going to lose my balls this weekend. I hope you’ve had your fill, Steve, cause party time’s over.”

Instead of replying, Steve pulls over a sheet of wax paper. “Here, make a practice one.”

Tony looks at the wax paper, then at Steve, and then back again. “I could practice a thousand times, Steve, and still make one of them look like shit.”

“And if you do, we’ll scrape it off and you can do another, until you get it right.” He taps the paper with a finger. “Do one.”

Tony heaves a tortured sigh and sits down on the closest bar stool. “I just don’t want to fuck up her wedding,” he mutters.

“I know,” Steve says. He taps the paper again.

Tony sighs again, but leans forward and sets to work, brows digging in as he concentrates. The first flower comes out a little droopy and blobby; it’s a disaster. “Fuck,” Tony says, despairing. “The colors aren’t even right, it’s all pink!”

“Come on,” Steve wheedles. “That’s why you do a couple practice ones. Nobody’s expecting you to get this right the first time.”

“I am,” Tony mumbles and Steve kisses the inside of his wrist.

“And we all know you’re completely unreasonable. Do another.”

Tony sniffs, but he bends back down and does another. When he leans back, he admits grudgingly, “Okay, that one doesn’t suck so bad.”

Steve smothers a smile and pulls the cake over. “You wanna try one on here?”

Tony swallows. “One more practice.”

Steve nods. “Go on.”

Tony makes another flower on the wax paper, this one even better than the last. The colors are mixing perfectly now. “Maybe one more—”

“No, Tony. This one goes on the cake.”

Tony shoots him a hunted, desperate look.

“You have to do it eventually, Tony. What’s going to look worse, a cake with a few imperfect flowers or a cake with no flowers at all?”

“Fine, give it here,” he mutters and pulls the cake over to where he can get up close and personal. His hands shake as he goes in to put the first glob of frosting and that’s just pathetic; he’s built _explosives_ for the love of god.

And the shaking shows in the end result. It looks like a drunk monkey made the stupid flower. “Look, I fucked it up—” he starts, frustration biting at the backs of his eyes. Steve scrapes the flower away in one deft move.

“Again.”

“Steve—”

“Again, Tony.”

He grits his teeth and sniffs and then just does it, because Steve’s a fucking ball-buster and he’s never gonna let him leave the kitchen if he doesn’t. The next flower’s not great, but it doesn’t look like a pile of shit either.

Steve meets his eyes when he looks up. “Good?”

“It’s all right,” Tony mutters, swiping his wrist under his nose.

Steve nods. “Keep going.”

The next one’s better and the one after that’s worse, and then they sort of even out somewhere around ‘tolerable’. He manages to get in three full rows with Steve carefully rotating it as he works. Then everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He’s getting near the end of the bag and he’s so intent on what he’s doing he doesn’t even realize there’s an air bubble in the stupid thing until it pops out the fucking tip and icing blurts out everywhere.

“ _Shit!_ ”

Steve makes a little noise of distress and then immediately says, “Hey, relax, it’s okay, look, it’s fine.” He curls one hand around Tony’s wrist and uses the other to scrape off the obliterated flower and the mess around it. Once that’s all gone there are a few stray spots of icing on a couple other flowers, but only one Steve determines is wrecked. He scrapes that one off, too, and Tony stares at the cake and tells himself he’s not going to cry because of a goddamn confection.

Steve helps him refill the pastry bag and puts one large, warm hand on his lower back while he works out the unblended frosting onto another scrap of wax paper. The angry flowers are sharper looking than the others.

“Take a deep breath and keep going,” Steve urges.

The replacement flower for the casualty comes out shaky and he kind of hates it, but next to the others it just looks kind of—more realistic. The spare specks of frosting drive him nuts, but he ignores them and blazes through the last row, then the top of the cake. By the last one, he hates every single weak-ass flower. They all look like a bunch of sloppy globs of jagged orange and pink shit.

“Hey,” Steve says, when Tony sits back at last, “wow, that looks great!”

Tony shoots a narrow-eyed look at him, searching for any sign of Steve’s dry humor, but the look of pleasure on his face is genuine. He looks back at the cake.

Okay, taking it in as a whole, it does look kinda…pretty. The inconsistencies give it a little panache and oh god, is he using words like panache now?

He sets down the pastry bag and kicks at Steve’s stool. “I guess it’s not the ugliest cake I’ve ever seen.”

Steve gives him a look and then reaches up and jams a thumb covered in frosting into the corner of Tony’s mouth. “Goddammit, Steve,” he says as the sugar bursts on his tongue, chased by the salty tang of Steve’s skin. Steve laughs at him and then smears three more fingers worth of frosting across the opposite cheek. “I hate you,” Tony tells him.

Steve ignores that and kisses him, licks his bottom lip clean. “Good-looking and tasty, too.”

“Me or the cake?”

Steve’s eyes twinkle. Then, as Tony’s looking at the stupid thing over Steve’s shoulder, a thought strikes him. “Hey, do we have any of those sugar pearls?”

~ * ~

Natasha’s eyes go wide when she sees it.

“Ah,” Tony says, “I know you didn’t ask for the pearls, but it just seemed like it needed something and—”

“Tony, it’s gorgeous, thank you.” She takes his face in her hands and kisses his cheek. “This means so much.”

Steve smiles as a blush spreads across the bridge of Tony’s nose. “Hey, I’m just glad you like it.”

“I love it,” she says.

“I told you it would work out,” Steve murmurs when everybody’s got a slice and the decorations have been cut and smushed into a mishmash of colored swirls.

“Yeah, yeah, smug’s not a good look for you,” Tony grumbles, but that’s a lie.


End file.
